Night Gliding
by Grasspaw
Summary: Teo was twelve the first time he went night gliding. Flying alone in the darkness and the silence, the world was beautiful and he was alive.


**Yeah, so... I love Teo. I'm not entirely pleased with how this turned out, but eh. I own nothing.**

Teo was twelve the first time he went night gliding. He knew that some of the teenagers did it occasionally, despite the adults' dire warnings against it. He would hear them laughing in the dead of night as they swooped past, yearn for the rush that only came from the air and the glorious sensation of falling before the wind caught him.

He didn't do it stupidly, the way the people in the warning stories did. He didn't just happen to wake up in the middle of the night and decide to go gliding. He found an old airbender almanac in the library and decided to do a little research. He figured out when the best possible night would be, waited anxiously for it to come around, then carefully wheeled out of his room and found his own specially-made glider stacked with all the others.

It took a little time to get the glider attached to his wheelchair; he usually had help, and he had only had to put it own by himself a handful of times. Finally, though, it was attached, and he pulled his goggles down over his eyes, got into position, and hesitated.

He was breaking at least a dozen rules. No night gliding, no solo gliding, no lying to his father (even by omission), no sneaking out...

He gritted his teeth, leaned forward, and wheeled himself towards the edge, his hands a blur.

He went over the edge. He was falling, he was laughing, he was flying.

It wasn't that different from flying during the day in that he still had to shift his weight to turn, could do loops the way he usually did. The actually gliding part wasn't that different.

It was the sky that was different.

It was... empty. When he turned and glided away from the temple for a time he felt like he was the only living creature in the world, soaring through an endless, beautiful nothing. He had never appreciated the sky until he was in it, and he had never felt he understood it until tonight. Black with tiny white dots of light that were stars, the moon observing the night silently.

Silently. That described it, he supposed. He could hear only the sound of the wind in his ears, and that was barely audible. Flying alone in the darkness and the silence, the world was beautiful and he was alive.

He slept deeply and didn't dream, and couldn't wait until the next night he would be able to get out again.

As it turned out, that wasn't for quite a while. He turned thirteen a month later - he couldn't get away on the night of his birthday - then, for one reason or another, couldn't manage it for the next two months. The weather was wrong, or he was too tired, or there was someone else out there. Then the Avatar came to their temple, and after that he barely had time to think. He squeezed in one more perfect night of flying before they went to help with the invasion of the Fire Nation. It was the night before they left, and he used it to say goodbye. He flew several times around the temple, the bubbly feeling in his stomach he usually got from flying countered by the heaviness in his heart. Something told him he wasn't coming back for a long time, maybe ever. If they failed, they would all be captured by the Fire Nation and used as slaves... or target practice. And even if they won he knew that his father would be busy, and so would he, and he just knew that this was his last night here.

He didn't cry.

The Western Air Temple was much different. They had some trouble getting him down there, since he couldn't climb down and the tunnels that Toph and Haru so obligingly made for everyone else were too rough for his wheelchair to make it through without trashing the wheels.

He wished he had his glider. He could so easily have just flown down and met them at the bottom. Instead, they had to do their best to get his chair up on Appa, then off again after a ten second flight down. He closed his eyes and pretended he had his glider.

The Hall of Statues was the best part of the temple. It was at a slight angle, so if he shoved off just right he would feel like he was gliding again, whipping past the statues too quickly to distinguish one from the other.

Nighttime was the best, though. The old airbenders had painted parts of the statues with something that glowed in the dark, so if he squinted his eyes just right he was suddenly transported back to the Northern Air Temple, that first night he had gone night gliding.

It was the squinting his eyes shut that made him crash at the end of the hallway. He wasn't paying attention, and when he opened his eyes the wall was mere feet away. He had no chance of braking, so he turned sharply to the side and wound up smashing against it with his right arm and back rather than his feet, which would probably have done even more irreparable damage to his legs. He heard something wooden snap, and first checking to make sure he hadn't destroyed some priceless airbender artifact, he gave his wheelchair a once-over and found that the brakes had been thoroughly destroyed. He managed to make it back to the place where everyone was sleeping, and with Sokka's help he fixed the brakes. Toph found a piece of metal that she bended around it to keep it from breaking so easily next time, and the next night he found himself back in the Hall of Statues.

He kept his eyes open.

He didn't get a chance to do any gliding for months after that - he was too busy hiding and running. He, Haru, and the Duke had become good friends, and they stayed together, meandering throughout the land until they got word that the war was over and they should come to Ba Sing Se. Desperate to be reunited with their family and friends, they did.

It was several more months before he saw the Northern Air Temple again. It took him that long to convince his father that their friends at home needed him just as much as the people in Ba Sing Se, and Teo needed to see the temple again.

He went night gliding the second night back. He would have gone the first, but the party celebrating their return lasted far into the night, and besides, the rain made it impossible. The next night, however, was perfect, so he sneaked out and again felt that thrill, that sense of wonder that nothing could compete with. He was home.

It was a year later that he went on his second-to-last night glide. He was fifteen years old, and had only been able to squeeze in one outing since returning to the temple. There was simply too much to do; his father was busy inventing amazing machines for the "betterment of the world," he himself was playing guinea pig for different wheelchairs and gliders, and there was just no time at all. The few nights that would have been perfect for it, he was too exhausted to drag himself out of bed.

Now, though... He pulled out his glider and hooked it on - he had become much adept at this in recent years. It was the same old one that he had first gone night gliding with. He didn't hesitate before plunging off the edge, laughing out loud when the wind caught him as always. It wasn't really magic, but it was the closer he would ever come.

He soared for ten minutes before he realized something was wrong. He was veering left, away from the temple. He tried turning and couldn't do it. Looking around in panic, he frantically pressed every button on his wheelchair that he could think of. He looked up at the glider, unable to see anything wrong with it from this angle, but he was completely unable to control it. He tried shouting; no one answered. As he began to fall, he pressed the button his father had built years ago, and a trail of grey smoke followed him to the ground. It would be mostly dissipated by the time anyone was awake, but maybe they would see it...

He blacked out when he hit the ground. When he awoke several hours later the sun was just rising. He was still strapped into his wheelchair, which had most likely saved his life. He was on a perilously small outcropping of rock, one of the wheels caught in a rut, and if he hadn't been attached to it he would have gone plunging to his death. He tried moving and was unable to; the wheelchair was firmly stuck, and from the sharp pain in his body he guessed he had broken several bones. Blood dripped gently down his face from some cut he couldn't find to bandage. He was bleeding from several places. He threw his head back and shouted until he was hoarse, but no one came. He didn't dare lean over to see how far down from the bottom he was; he didn't want to risk upsetting the wheelchair and falling over the edge. It wasn't the height that bothered him, or the thought of falling. It was the ground.

He finally fell asleep after several hours. He knew he needed to stay awake, alert, but he couldn't help it. The pain was too much, and his vision swam. One of his goggles was cracked; he took them off and placed them in his lap, fingering them gently. His father had made these for him... He fell asleep with them clutched in his hand.

He awoke to a burning thirst. The sun was beating down on him; as far as he could tell, it was just past noon. He heard shouts and tried to respond, but he could barely raise his voice. He knew they were looking for him; they had probably sent people to rappel down the mountainside by now. In the Northern Air Temple, there were only so many places to look for a missing person. The only way to go was down.

He was asleep again when they found him. He opened his eyes a crack to see people swooping by on their gliders, yelling something, and he laughed and cried from relief. One of the men landed next to him and kept him company, giving him food and water and bandaging his wounds as best as he could. It took hours for them to get him away from the cliffside; they had to set up a complex pulley system to get his wheelchair to the top. He just wanted to see his father.

The man glided away and Teo was slowly lifted up into the air by people at the top. Immediately someone lifted him from his wheelchair and he was carried off to the infirmary, where he stayed for two weeks. He had broken two ribs and wrenched his arm out of it socket in the fall, as well as sustaining numerous cuts and minor neck injuries when he landed. He slept most of the time and had no end of visitors. The children and teenagers admired his bravery, the adults scolded him for his foolishness then stuffed him full of treats. He considered falling off a cliff more often, but he secretly swore he would never get on his glider alone or at night again.

And he didn't. Not for almost sixty-five years. Finally, at seventy-nine years of age, he awoke in the middle of the night. He had never left the temple. He had gone on visits to other places, of course, but the Northern Air Temple was his home. His wife was dead, his daughter had long since moved to Republic City.

With trembling hands he wheeled himself out of his room and found his glider. It took him several tries to get it hooked on to his wheelchair, and then he checked it compulsively for any flaw for nearly ten minutes. Finally, satisfied that absolutely nothing could go wrong, he wheeled himself out into the courtyard.

He had to start much farther back than he used to; it took him that long to build up enough speed. And suddenly he was twelve again, and it was his first time night gliding.

And the world was beautiful, and he was alive.


End file.
